I have a big interest in search engines and I've posted a lot about them in different communities. When I post about a new search engine it is often because there is something about it that is fascinating or just different. Other times it might be one that looks as if it has a chance of being of interest to some people.
I'm going to do something a little unusual because I'm writing about a search engine which I'm really not impressed with. That could be because they are very new and everything isn't yet working the way it will later. I'm writing about it because it could really catch the interest of large amounts of people if it works as planned. I'm also writing about it because of the person who is behind it, which adds to the possibility that it might have a chance at some type of success.
The person behind this new search engine is Scott Jones. He helped create voice mail technology. Scott Jones also created Gracenote, which is one of the software systems used in iTunes.
This new search engine is free and has paid "guides" who will give live one-on-one help to users who need extra help finding what they want. It is being tested now and the plan is for it to go into full beta later this year.
The idea is to connect users to a guide who has experience, knowledge or background in a particular field. The added use of human intelligence is suppose to give much better results.
The guides are organized by their areas of knowledge. Users connect to the guide by instant message from the home page of the site. Users can ask the guide questions until they get their desired information.
The plan is to have about 3000 guides and add more as needed. The guides will be paid $5 to $10 an hour. The guides who do a better job of bringing user satisfaction can earn up to $20 an hour.
Guides will also be doing searches on popular terms and organizing them so that when users don't want a live guide they can search and receive search results that have been organized by the guides.
This free service will earn revenue through advertising, including videos shown while users wait for a guide and during searches. The waiting time for a guide is suppose to be less than a minute.
Everything is just getting started and is expected to improve over time. Right now I'm not all that impressed. Many areas don't have any guides and searches done without a guide often produce very poor results and in some cases no results at all.
My main reason to mention this now is to make people aware of this new search service and to have it as one to watch and see how much progress they make over a period of time.
The name of this new search is ChaCha. Here is a link to them
http://www.chacha.com
You will also see something there called the ChaCha Underground. This will let you see some searches currently being handled by their guides. It will also show you the catagories that have a large staff of guides and therefore have a chance of being able to better show how the service can work.